After a year’s break while they were in rented accommodation, my parents returned to hosting our Christmas family gathering, at their new house in Kendal. I took the Friday off work and travelled north in the morning, thus avoiding the evening rush. In the afternoon, I made a start on pressure washing the patio and paths around the perimeter of house.
Saturday was a fairly wet day, but started with a dry weather window for a visit to Penrith parkrun. Dad participated in the run and Mum came along to spectate. A strong westerly wind made parts of the course hard work, but gave me a good excuse for being 40 seconds slower than on my previous visit in the summer. After I’d scanned my barcodes, I caught up with Dad for the remainder of his second lap. We stayed at home in the afternoon, and Mum and I enjoyed a game of Scrabble.
Christmas Eve was a little brighter. I finished off the pressure washing in the morning, then Ruth and Josh joined us for a pre-lunch walk from Sizergh Castle up the ridge to Helsington church and back. We enjoyed good views over the Lyth Valley and Morecambe Bay.
On Christmas morning, Ruth and Josh took the opportunity to join me for a bonus parkrun. This year we chose Lancaster, where we knew there would be a chance to see Joe and Andrena, and Josh’s brother Toby. The course was exactly as tough as I remembered it from my one previous visit in 2017, with two steep climbs on each lap, and a very muddy section beside the small reservoir. I couldn’t keep up with Ruth’s fell-running colleague, Richard Mellon, but was pleased to be within 10 seconds and to finish in under 21 minutes.
Once back in Kendal, and showered and changed, we sat down by the Christmas tree to open the presents. Then we enjoyed our traditional roast turkey dinner before a lazy afternoon. I helped Dad set up his new tablet while Ruth, Mum and Josh played a couple of games.
Boxing Day looked like the one nice day of the visit, so we took a morning trip to Tarn Hows for a family walk, arriving fairly early in anticipation that the car park would get busy later on. There were beautiful reflections as we set off around the west side of the tarn.
Then we picked up some tracks through the forest to reach the slopes of Black Fell, and followed the grassy path up to its summit for views over Coniston Water. We could see that an unexpected rain shower was approaching over Wetherlam, so we didn’t hang about long before setting off back down to Tarn Hows, completing our circumnavigation by following the paths on the east side back to the car.
A map of our route can be seen here.
In the evening, it was turkey leftovers for dinner, and a bit of time spent packing for the next phase of the holiday – in Scotland, as usual!
My full photo album can be viewed on Google Photos here.
To be continued…
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